Women’s World Cup 2025: England’s batting exposed by Pakistan
England will travel to Indore for their next two matches where they will face their toughest rivals in India on Sunday and Australia on October 22.
They are not ideal opponents to face with their batting fragility either, but the pitches are expected to be flatter and friendlier to hitters.
It was Knight’s gritty determination that saved them against Bangladesh and Sciver-Brunt’s class enabled them to get the winning total against Sri Lanka, but England failed to recover when both fell early against Pakistan.
World Cup winner Alex Hartley said on the BBC Test Match Special: “Nat Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight have scored more points in this tournament than their team-mates combined.”
“That says something in itself, and neither of them batted in the first game. That’s a concern.”
Beaumont and Jones have struggled with the swinging ball – stands of six, 24 and 13 after a chase of just 70 in the opener against South Africa – but Charlotte Edwards’ first move in charge was to show faith and re-promote Jones, and she is unlikely to disrupt the duopoly.
After Sciver-Brunt and Knight, England’s next best batsman was number eight Charlie Dean, who notched a steady 27 in a tense chase against Bangladesh, a handy 19 against Sri Lanka and top-scored with 33 against Pakistan.
There were encouraging words from Alice Capsey at seven but Sophia Dunkley and Emma Lamb are struggling to start their innings against spin in the middle order.
Lamb has 18 runs on three hits while Dunkley has 29, each of the shutouts will return, with the former being asked to play an unfamiliar role.
Lamb, who is in the top three in domestic and international cricket, averaged 44 in 61 innings with five centuries. The three innings here is his first in the 50-over format as a professional at batting six.
Danni Wyatt-Hodge is England’s unused batsman off the bench and has been playing in the middle order for a number of years, so it will be interesting to see how long the Lamb experiment lasts.
England may have avoided an embarrassing mistake here, but they will be aware that things are not going to get any easier.
India and Australia are waiting. Any vacillation against these two and England’s campaign could quickly fail.
